MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

8/8 Castro: “I need my family to eat”

Starlin Castro finished his first two seasons in the big leagues with a .300 batting average. But the Cubs shortstop is struggling, hitting a career-low .272.

“I want to finish strong,” Castro said Wednesday. “Every [season], I finish strong. Every time, I put it in my mind that the last month, if you don’t finish strong, my family doesn’t eat. I put that in my mind. I need my family to eat these two months, like they eat in the first four months. I put that in my mind all the time. I’ll do it for sure.”

Castro has had a dropoff since Rudy Jaramillo was dismissed as the Cubs hitting coach on June 12. In 60 games with Jaramillo, Castro was batting .308, and in the 48 games since, he’s hitting .226. But Castro made it clear new Cubs hitting coach James Rowson is not to blame.

“That guy is good — he’s unbelievable,” Castro said of Rowson, promoted from his post as the Cubs Minor League coordinator. “He talks to you. I like him. He’s kind of like Rudy — it’s almost the same guy. It’s not because of him.”

What Dale Sveum sees is the need to simplify things.

“There’s so many moving parts that are going on that don’t need to go on,” Sveum said of Castro’s swing. “There’s not a good base on a consistent basis. … There’s so much movement going on, it’s going to be hard to be consistent. He has to narrow things down to be able to use his hand-eye coordination.”

Sveum said Castro, who led the National League in hits last season, doesn’t need to alter too much but may become a winter project.

“It’s not like a big change — it’s making him understand he doesn’t need all this extra movement going on to succeed,” Sveum said.

7 Comments

Looks like Castro and his agent are looking for a long term contract. Starlin, you need to wait your turn. The Cubs owe you nothing at this point. If you can produce big numbers and help this team to win, you will be rewarded. Meanwhile Starlin, spend less time putting sun flower seeds in your mouth, pay attention to the game, and start hitting.

Except for the nasty, un-cecessary “captain obvious” slur, I agree with petrey, Castro is well woth the risk of signing him to a long term contract sooner rather than later. If Hoystein hasn’t determined that Castro is indeed going to be the Cubs’ SS for a long time then he (they) is not as smart as adverstised. Sign Castro long term, get it over with. It may (MAY) make up for the worst long term contract in Cubs’ history….Soriano’s.

this is one of the areas where i really trust sveum. he got great results out of the brewers hitters, and it probably played a large part in getting offered this job. i do wonder how much time he gives to working with the hitters, and if he does, then i hope castro and others listen to him.
this is something we don’t hear much about from the media: whether sveum acts as a second hitting coach, or whether all his other managerial duties keep him from spending time on this. seems like it would be foolish not to use his skill in this area.

I wonder if anyone out there has ever played on a really bad team; it doesn’t exactly make one play to their full potential. The very same thing will happen to Jackson, Vitters and Rizzo, mark my word. This non-sense of treating these kids Epstein/Hoyer like gods standing on their every word as this is crazy; to this point they are one hit wonders and need to earn their stripes and all they have done to date is drop payroll by moving the only performers getting little in return. Sometimes rebuilding only means a reason for excuses and job security while taking advantage of the loyal Cub fans that come out everyday win or lose; try telling your boss we’ll make money in 3-5 years and say good bye to your job. As for Sveum, doesn’t seem to the players are responding to well to his methods to date and must prove his worth as well not to method the several rookie manger mistakes he has made. Wake up Cub fans and stop going out to the park and see how fast this rebuilding mode accelerates.

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